Yet another drought!!

As the summer sets in, the communities in the Thar desert of western Rajasthan gear up to face another spell of excruciating heat, grueling water scarcities and ‘drought’. Has it been declared! Which villages are severely affected, which are less severely affected and which lucky ones seem to have escaped the wrath of drought! And what works are to be done under drought relief and who gets how many! The crowded meeting halls and corridors of the district, block and Panchayat headquarters in the desert districts of western Rajasthan resonate with these ruminations. As the heat waves tighten their grips on the desert dwellers the state relief department, now decked up in the new glamorous attire of department of disaster management, would keep on talking about new work sanctions, extending labour ceilings, announcements of distributing food grains, amidst accusations hurled by the opposition political party for having not done enough.

For most of the villagers these events of state response are part of a ritual that rehearses itself every year with its own share of farces and tragedies, bringing in occasions for ‘profit maximization’ (associated with corruption, hoarding, wage exploitation etc.) by the well- entrenched nexus of rural elites-contractors-bureaucrats and politicians. Surely an exorbitant price for averting starvation deaths by piecemeal employment generation works and distribution of sub standard, rotting food grains in the land of parched earth and dried water sources.

Drought is not only a creeping disaster it is equally elusive as well. 'Droughts' leading to widespread destitution have been embedded features in the history of the Indian Thar. Traditional folk wisdom abounds in stories, proverbs and sayings that talk of the intimate relation of drought and desert. A cursory glance at the record of the last half a century of these districts would tell you that more than ninty five percent of the years have been affected by drought. But never have cycles of drought contributed to impoverishment of the poor in such a significant way as they have done through the later half of the 1990s continuing in the early years of the 21st century.

Since 1999 major parts of western Rajasthan have been under the grips of drought that has set in near permanent cycles of pauperization and destitution that have firmly tightened their grips on a vast majority of the toiling poor. Even the command areas of the IGNP canal have not been spared from the gnawing clutches of drought. The pitched inter state as well inter region battles, curfews, bloody farmer protests over water in the last two years have squarely questioned the assumption, originating in the colonial times, about the role of the perennial irrigation schemes in liberating regions and communities from 'drought'. In fact leave aside water for irrigation many settlements in the IGNP Stage II canal command areas today face an everyday back- breaking scarcity of drinking water.

This article first appeared in Tehelka, June 2006